Housing Affordability

This report is about homelessness, considered in the context of our wider housing, service, and social system.
Homelessness is an urgent and growing problem. Currently, homelessness as an end point gets significant attention from governments and the specialist services working in the sector.

While the stereotypical face of poverty is a older man – a lifetime down on his luck, the fastest growing demographic of people experiencing homelessness is single women over the age of 55.
While it is clear that women are victim to lifelong structural settings that have undermined their financial security – the state of the housing market is what is pushing so many women from housing stress into

Older Australians are falling off the housing ladder and face spending their retirement as renters, with the situation expected to worsen for coming generations.
Senior Australians in the private rental market are “at much greater risk of financial stress than home owners, or those in public housing”, according to the Grattan Institute’s recently launched Grattan Retirement Incomes Model.
Older

Christine is a recently retired and now homeless mature age woman who has, like so many other retired professional women, little to no prospect of obtaining public or community housing, or being able to afford market price rentals.
She is the convenor of the Housing Alternatives self-help action group on Facebook and the creator of the Housing Alternatives web site,

The homelessness monitor is a longitudinal study providing an independent
analysis of the homelessness impacts of recent economic and policy
developments in England. It considers both the consequences of the post-2007
economic and housing market recession, and the subsequent recovery, and also
the impact of policy changes.

COTA SA, the peak advocacy body for older people in South Australia, is urging the Liberal Government to make a commitment to address escalating housing stress and homelessness among older South Australians in its 2018/19 State Budget.
The housing ‘ticking time bomb' is one of a number of issues identified that COTA SA has included recommendations for in its 2018 State Budget Submission, del

Some seniors struggling to make the rent in Los Angeles have turned to living with strangers, connecting through an agency called Affordable Living for the Aging, which provides housing for low-income seniors. It’s one of a growing number of groups that play matchmaker for older people who could use roommates.

Housing policy in Australia has a split personality: we are either shaking our heads at how hard it is for wealthy millennials to buy their first home or we are wringing our hands at the plight of the homeless.
Policymakers have responded in a piecemeal and often counterproductive fashion to these individual and seemingly isolated issues, providing financial incentives to first homebuyers and cri

The report, “Retiring into Poverty”, released by the National Older Women’s Housing and Homelessness Working Group, said systemic factors such as lower superannuation, unequal pay and forced time off to raise children were key factors of the increase.
The combination of women having a lower overall income and housing affordability in major cities was a cause of great instability.
Housing afforda

This Plan for Change proposes a series of initiatives to help older women to be able to live in homes that are safe, secure and affordable. It has been developed by a group of non-government agencies...